Happy NBA Draft Lottery Day Knicks Fans!
Rise and shine, Knicks fans. Today is the NBA Lottery and the Knicks are…NOWHERE TO BE FOUND ON THE TANKATHON LOTTERY LIST!
For as long as I've been blogging at Barstool and for almost the entire James Dolan Era, the NBA Lottery has become the Knicks' new annual ritesof Spring instead of in the 90s when it was a big playoff game against the Bulls, Heat, or Pacers. However in the words of one of the few people that are both smarter and bigger than me:
Goddamn does it feel good to care about nothing tonight. Yes there is a chance that Cade Cunningham or anybody in the Top 14 can become a first ballot Hall of Famer. But my soul is at ease for the first lottery in almost a decade because the Knicks were good enough to actually make the playoffs. Any other year, I would've spent every waking moment wondering if the Knicks were sending the person with the most possibly juju to represent them in Secaucus or playing the lottery simulator before everything inevitably ended in utter heartbreak.
Which is why I love that I cannot get gutted yet again tonight. Sooner or later, you need your team to stop trying to win lotteries they will never win and instead focus on winning games. The Sixers spent years losing on purpose, actually won the lottery a few times, and all they got for it was a couple of building blocks, some trips to the second round of the NBA playoffs, and a banshee shriek in Philadelphia that could be heard in Pittsburgh as their season bled out.
The Knicks getting their shit pushed in by the Hawks in five games wasn't exactly the most fun way to have a season end. But the entire 2020-21 Knicks season that led to them getting the four seed was much more enjoyable than waiting through all the bullshit ESPN does before unveiling what those cruel ping pong balls have done to our franchise then sending us home with a pick that was inevitably worse than we would've had if everybody stayed in the same spot.
Knicks fans rooting to win the lottery has been like eating a snack. It feels good when you are doing it but it ultimately leaves us unfulfilled and that's coming from a snack lover. However, rooting for a basketball team to win actual basketball games is like eating a real meal with sides and a nice beer. It leaves you fulfilled.
I haven't thought about who the Knicks were going to send to the lottery or played the Tankathon simulator ONCE. Cade Cunningham can become a first ballot Hall of Famer but my soul is still at ease because sooner or later your team has to actually start winning games instead of trying to win lotteries, which the Knicks haven't done in more than 35 years and instead fall in the draft nonstop. It would've been pretty sweet if the Mavs could've sucked this season and turned their first round pick into a lottery pick. However, having one of the best basketball players in the universe prevented that from happening. So we will have to pray the 2023 pick becomes that lottery pick in a season where Luka hopefully tries to position his way out of Dallas.
As for the actual lottery, which I will always love as someone whose team has lived there this century, I am picking the Rockets to get the number 1 pick based solely on team representatives.
I get that this is a Mintzy chalk pick since the Rockets had the worst record and nobody has a better chance to win the lottery than their 14%. But there is just something I can visualize Hakeem The Dream being interviewed after bringing yet another one pick back to Houston, so I would've picked the Rockets whether they were 1st or 14th in terms of odds.
While I'm discussing lottery representatives, let me shout out the man who will hopefully be the last person to rep the Knicks at the lottery for a very, very long time.
#InLeonWeTrust. Now let's go slightly tamper with some stars that may be upset with their current franchise and keep building on the momentum of this season so the Knicks are playing on ever Lottery Day for the foreseeable future.